On putting the cart before the horse in cries for censorship
“misinformation” presumes the facts have already been decided while that is the point of free speech to begin with
In the reflection below, I have taken up the debate between (a) free speech and censorship of misinformation rather than that between (b) free speech and suppression of hate speech because the public discourse surrounding (b) the second dichotomy seems intentionally designed to obfuscate the issue at hand rather than to clarify it and hence the apparent political-philosophical question is really a surrogate for a political-tribal one. I have chosen to address one of these dichotomies (a) and not the other (b) and, indeed, I think they ought be be clearly distinguished because they are separate issues. The fact that they are often construed as the same issue serves only further to disintegrate the caliber of discourse and render it increasingly unlikely that any resolution will be reached.
It’s too dangerous to allow the chaff to the threshing floor together with the wheat because some of it might fail to be parted…
Many people are understandably exasperated with the current state of affairs in the public fora and for this reason, many had resorted to advocating more stringent regulations on free speech. Despite that the sentiment is understandable, I remain unconvinced that the solution they have proposed will actually have the result that they profess to be seeking. That’s because any virtue in censorship presupposes that “the facts” have already been discriminated from “misinformation.” But that’s not how the world is. Instead, the wheat and the tares grow together, and remain together until Judgement Day. If we wish to discern the facts before then, we cannot expect them simply to fall into our laps. Instead, we are confronted with the task of making this discernment just like everyone else, including the “blue-checks,” the “experts,” and the “fact-checkers.” And, pace the proponents of “suppressing misinformation”—which is generally to be interpreted as a euphemism for censorship—to stifle free speech is to deprive ourselves of one of the most effective methods of doing this and hence, ipso facto, to encourage the opposite of what the proponents of censorship claim. It is a basic fallacy—an argumentum ad hominem, of sorts—to appeal to the authority of a person or institution irrespective of the cogency of the argument that is provided. It’s a kind of hypocrisy to decry misinformation and then advocate recourse to fallacious reasoning as a response.
Indeed, one of the most confusing elements in the debate between “suppression of misinformation” and freedom of speech is that the two positions are often construed as commensurable standpoints on a single issue, but that’s not really accurate. Freedom of speech is a method for establishing the facts of a given matter and arriving at an understanding of the truth of things. Many people imagine freedom of speech is a question of being entitled to emotional unloading in the public forum but that is not integral to freedom of speech any more than drowning ones enemies is integral to the purpose of a plastic pool and a water hose. That free speech as a method for ascertaining truth and understanding an issue is “imperfect” is immaterial to the question at hand and it is an unrealistic standard to meet that a method should be perfect anyway.
All of this being said, the right to free speech ought to be understood as part and parcel with being a responsible citizen. In other words, the right to free speech should be seen as correlative to the responsibility for individuals to do their due diligence in respect to the diverse opinions that are surely to be promulgated. I can illustrate what I mean with the example of drinking turpentine to cure disease, which is a favourite straw-man of those, like YouTube, who are advocating for “the suppression of misinformation.” If freedom of speech is to be preserved—which I think it ought indeed to be—it is necessary to foster the understanding that it is correlative with a sort of “Socratic” attitude towards a statement like “turpentine is a global panacea.” We should not, at once, assume it to be true, but rather seek to question it and to juxtapose it to countervailing views and prior knowledge that we possess. In this light, YouTube’s turpentine argument is not very convincing because any sensible person will be able to find information that disproves the premise. Clearly, a citizenry that is entitled to the right to free expression must also be capable of dealing with it. On the other hand, freedom of speech has no place in a citizenry that is incapable of bearing the responsibility that comes with it.
The point of freedom of speech is to establish the conditions in which people can learn the truth, and credulity clearly fails to fosters such conditions. But censorship hardly fails any better. In fact, it is arguably much more deleterious to learning than credulity because the former can be easily corrected by critical examination whereas censorship is always institutionalized and hence, liable to be protected by a bulwark of facelessness and bureaucracy. “Suppressing misinformation” may be a defensible policy once the facts have been established but it is far from a viable method for arriving at these facts. Indeed, the idea presents such a contradiction in terms that it is hard to see calls for “suppressing misinformation” as anything other than a cynical ploy to manufacture consent, impose an artificial perception of consensus, and disenfranchise political enemies. Of course, we have already observed numerous cases of just these things undertaken under the pretext of “suppressing misinformation” over the last few months.
These are very elementary principles but at the same time, it seems that contemporary public contentiousness has reached such a pitch that comparatively few people who bother to think this through comprehensively appear capable of making themselves heard in the public sphere. As a result, every argument is reduced to pro and contra and their correlative slogans. Anyway, it is obviously one of the defining issues of our time so I think it’s great that we have the opportunity to understand these questions rather than merely becoming activists for them.
Case study on current geopolitics (a few months ago I would have used an issue surrounding COVID and COVID vaccination policies to illustrate the point but for now it seems to be playing second fiddle to the conflict in Ukraine):
It is extraordinary—isn’t it?—the way the government in the USA and in Russia have reciprocally prohibited the dissemination of news from the other country and labelled it as “propaganda” and “disinformation.” Of course, one side of this is immediately perceptible to us while in order to see the other takes real effort. Below, for instance, is presented a sort of “aporetic triad” in respect to US government propaganda:
Mis- dis- and mal-information are identified by the Biden administration as constituting a terrorist threat:
“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.” (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/ntas/alerts/22_0207_ntas-bulletin.pdf)
The Biden administration brags about, and appears to demonstrate, strategic use of disinformation:
“It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence,” one U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them [the Russians], Putin specifically, before they do something.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-declassified-intel-fight-info-war-russia-even-intel-isnt-rock-rcna23014)
“Biden says Putin is weighing use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, without citing evidence” (https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-says-putin-is-weighing-use-chemical-weapons-ukraine-2022-03-21/)
The Biden administration accuses Russia of promulgating disinformation:
“The Biden administration has increasingly focused on calling out Russian disinformation and propaganda, making it a central pillar of its strategy to confront Moscow and help defend Ukraine in the face of Russia’s war tactics.” (https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/591870-us-targets-russian-disinformation-in-bid-to-defend-ukraine/)
Post-script: I highly recommend Apex’s analysis of a related aspect of this issue, which is especially illuminating in respect to what “freedom” means (i.e. freedom from certain consequences) both abstractly and concretely: